THE POPULAR AESTHETICS OF COLOR. 365 



siderable. While hlue is pre-eminently and overwhelmingly the 

 masculine favorite, it is by no means so general a feminine favor- 

 ite. The favorite woman's color, standing at the head of the 

 female list, is red. Roughly speaking, of every thirty masculine 

 votes, ten would be for hlue and three for red ; while of every thirty 

 feminine votes, /owr would be for hlue and^ive for red. Red and 

 blue are thus much more nearly equally popular among women 

 than among men. Other relatively marked masculine prefer- 

 ences are for the colors related to blue (blue violet and violet), 

 and other feminine preferences are for lighter red (or pink), and, 

 to a less extent, for green and yellow. Further, men confine their 

 selections to relatively fewer colors than do women ; and finally, 

 while all men and women alike are much more apt to choose a 

 normal than a transitional color and a darker than a lighter 

 shade, yet the tendency to do so (about the same in the former 

 direction) is markedly different in the latter respect ; of a dozen 

 men, ten would choose among the darker colors and only two 

 among the lighter for the most pleasing color ; while of a dozen 

 women, seven would choose among the darker and five among the 

 lighter shades. This feminine fondness for the lighter and dain- 

 tier shades appears also in other respects, to be noted presently. 



Passing next to the discussion of the preferences among the 

 combinations of colors enumerated above, the first noteworthy 

 result is that no combination of colors occupies the position of a 

 decided favorite as did blue among the single colors ; but that 

 preferences for the several combinations vary gradually froin the 

 most to the least favorite. The two most frequently (and about 

 equally) preferred combinations are red with violet and red with 

 hlue, which are somewhat similar in effect (the violet being very 

 dark in appearance) ; more than one fifth of all the persons con- 

 tributing to the results choose one or the other of these com- 

 binations. The third in the list is hlue with violet. The three 

 most favorite combinations are those composed of the three 

 colors, red, violet, and hlue. The next position on the list is taken 

 by those who are unable to decide upon any one combination as 

 their favorite, and it should be noted that this group is nearly 

 twice as large in the selection of the combination as it is in the 

 selection of a single color. Then follow lighter red with lighter 

 green, red luith green, lighter red with lighter hlue, and red ivith 

 lighter green. Some one of the above eight cojor combinations 

 was chosen by tliree out of every five persons who recorded a 

 preference, the remaining t'lvo fifths of the preferences being dis- 

 tributed very widely and rather uniformly among the remaining 

 seventeen colors. The combinations most generally avoided are 

 orange ivith green, orange with violet, lighter orange ivith lighter 

 hlue. 



